'Blog' for the Year 2019

The year 2019 has started very well for me - January was at least semi-quiet, i.e. not too many 'issues' at work, such that I was able to take it a bit easier during the first few week, and - most important - I was able to take a course at the Ithra !

Late January - Course at Ithra

Beginning of this year the Ithra has started to offer a lot of events and workshops for the general public - speaking with one of the organizer, who told me that she has to arrange 600 workshops (!) during the next three years. Myself, I took a course, which was related to how to use drawings as a mean of communication.

The course was taught by Von Glitschka, a professional designer working and living at the US West Coast. Most of the participiants were having some sort of an artistic / designer background, or they wanted to develop themselves into that direction ...

Von Glitschka

The Participiants

Mohammed ...

"Sitting on the Liver"

Joint Work ...

... our 'star' was Mohammed, a Museum Guide at the Ithra, showed a great talent in drawing like the one "Sitting on the Liver', an exercice where we had to draw some metaphor. Interesting was also that in Arab, we have the metaphor of 'Sitting on the Liver", where in German we have the same metaphor with "Creeping across the Liver". The Joint Work was a drawing we did together (the 5 participiants sitting around one table), where each one was drawing something and the next one added an additional drawing to it - sometimes something new, or sometimes related to an already existing drawing.

Early January - Further development of Woman Rights

Beginning of the year, the Saudi justice ministry announced that - going forward - woman will be informed by a text message (sic!) about their marital status after they have been divorced. Earlier, it was possible that husbands could divorce their wives without their knowledge.

That may sound pretty odd from a Western perspective, but at the same time it also shows the willingness of the Saudi government to give additional rights to Saudi women !